Hind and Hindu

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While watching a movie today, I recalled a news coverage from an Indian news channel sometime around the Iraq war post 9/11. An Indian lady reporter (whose name I cannot recall now) was talking to villagers somewhere in remote Iraq. She told them she is from India and the villagers had a confused look. She then said she is from “Hind” and yeah they had a smile and knew where she was from.

Now I am very passionate about history, and thus could not stop myself from sharing my thoughts on this. When a Hindu person says – “Hinduism is not a religion but a way of life” it has deep historical rather than religious meaning. Hind is the word by which most of ancient Persia and middle East knew India by. Hind referred to the area east of the River Sindhu, or what we now know as River Indus. The word India itself is believed to be derived from Indus. This river usually marked the western boundaries of ancient Indian empires. People of Hind were known as Hindi.

Muhammad Iqbal, in his famous poem “Saare Jahan se Accha…” published in 1904 uses the line “Hindi hain hum, watan hai Hindostan hamara”, which in English translates to “We are of Hind, our homeland is Hindustan”. He probably knew more of history than the political pundits of today. With time, the people of this land came to be known as Hindus and their language as Hindi.


Notes of Interest - 
  1. Saare Jahan se Accha is also a marching song of the Indian Army, often played by bands during the 26th January Republic day parade in Delhi.
  2. When in 1984, Rakesh Sharma, the first Indian astronaut was asked by then PM Indira Gandhi on how India looked from space, he used the first line of the poem "Saare Jahan se Accha, Hindustan hamara" to describe the same.

Disclaimer – In this post, I am trying to be historically correct rather than politically correct 😀.

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